| Lee, being one of our regular readers, has offered to compile a matchmans diary for us here at T.A So, without further ado, let us introduce him to you.
Lee Newson - an introduction.
I am aged 30 and live in Dunstable near Luton in Bedfordshire.
I fished for Team Image for 12 years from the early Image Blackhorse days who I joined when I was 16 after finishing top individual points scorer in the National Intermediate League.
I fished with Image during their rise through the National divisions from division 6 to division 1 in successive seasons, picking up a team Gold on the Lancaster canal along the way.
I have fished in 2 AT Winter League finals and also fished in the NFA knockout final in Denmark during this successful spell.
During these 12 great years we won numerous league titles including Winter Leagues, Super Leagues, a couple of Eastern Region Championships and even managed to win the Stainforth and Keadby canal championships, otherwise known as the 'Northern National', beating Barnsley off the next peg.
Following the demise of Image I have had a spell with Team Browning and last season captained a team of 6 which defeated the mighty Essex County to win the highly competitive Milton Keynes winter league. This was an out an out bloodworm and joker league fished on the Grand Union Canal, which also included the powerful Leicester Sensas and Browning Hot Rods teams.
I have now joined Sensas Milton Keynes, a team which I believe has a massive amount of potential and I look forward to taking you through the ups and downs of my first season with them....
Diary No1
Welcome to the first of what will be a monthly diary which I hope you will find both informative and enjoyable.
After several weeks ravaged due to foot and mouth I was looking forward to a sustained attack on the Canals. I am going to start off with a match at Berkhamstead on the Grand Union Canal and I was hoping to follow up a 3rd place at Castle Ashby the previous week with a decent result. I drew what looked like a poor peg past the noted scout hut area on a wide and featureless swim however looks can be deceiving!
After catching a few small fish close in I decided to have a drop in at 16m looking for a Bream in the vain hope that there may be some in the area, although there were no features to indicate that there would be. A few Gudgeon followed, not exactly what I was fishing at 16m for, so I dropped down into the deeper water at 13m still with a Bream type rig and double maggot. I instantly caught a near 3lb Bream before a couple of rogue barges killed the swim. I hoped the boats had forced the fish up onto the 16m line I had fed with chopped worm and Caster as I thought they were more likely to stay there, and after waiting a while I caught another 3lb fish. Now, the bites were not exactly forthcoming but when the fish are that size you don't need many to put together a decent weight and I slowly picked off an odd fish through the day to end with 8 Bream and a total of 20.12.0 and 2nd place.
The following week I headed back to the same venue and once again decided all an all out Bream attack and finished with a few decent Skimmers and a couple of Bream for 11.4.0 to pinch 4th place and the Section. Again a positive approach had paid off and this was to be a feature of the next few weeks as the Roach refused to feed in any numbers. Soft groundbait, chopped worm and casters with a double red maggot or double caster hookbait over the top was the method.
Unfortunately I couldn't find another match on the canal so I fished a very uneventful match at Heyford fishery which I won't bore you with. I did manage to come 2nd with 14.12.0 but this consisted of just 4 carp caught fishing at 16m all day. 30 odd pound won the day from the peg nearest the bridge, enough said!
My next two matches were both on the canal in the Northampton area and saw me struggle in poor areas. I adopted the same positive methods as I had in the previous matches and although I didn't win anything, interestingly I don't think I ended up with any less than if I had fished more defensively. In the first match I caught a 1lb Roach and a handful of small skimmers for 2.13.4 with just over 3lb needed for 3rd on a very difficult day. The next match saw me catch one bream and a few bits for 3.11.0 in probably the shallowest peg I've ever drawn - my hooklength was deeper than the peg at 11m! It never ceases to amaze me the depth of water these bream can be caught in, they must swim along on their sides Flounder style!
However, my luck was to change in the next match, an 80 pegger on the canal in Milton Keynes. I drew what I thought was a poor peg on the day, although I have seen Skimmers caught there before. The reason I thought it was a poor draw on the day was because it was on a wide totally barren stretch opposite a bare field and was sandwiched between noted Bream pegs to the left and right with trees and rushes as cover. I knew that boat traffic would be heavy and whilst I thought I would catch a few to start with I feared that after a few boats any fish would soon disappear to seek sanctuary under some cover.
With this in mind I decided to take real gamble and attack right from the off. Although this goes against all the theory that you need to give a shoal time to settle otherwise they will disappear, I thought they would disappear anyway after an hour or so. Fishing double red maggot overdepth at 14.5m I slaughtered skimmers in the first hour and put 9lb in the net during this time while all around me pinched a few Roach on the inside. Then it died and it was a case of sitting it out and trying to nick an odd fish. A 2lb fish mid-match kept me at it and in the last hour a few 6oz skimmers won it for me. I finished with 13.6.8 1st place, £200 in the back pocket and my first 4 Kamasan points of the season.
Onto last weekend, Saturday I fished a really interesting match at Bobby George's (the darts player) lakes in Colchester. There are two small lakes with 15 pegs on each, one is a lot newer than the other so I guessed you would need to draw the older lake as the fish would be bigger - how true this turned out to be! The day consisted of a 2 hour match in the morning and a 3 hour match in the afternoon, so the fairest way to do it would be to fish the morning match then swap lakes for the afternoon. Unfortunately due to time constraints you had to fish the same peg morning and afternoon and to make it even more unfair it was decided on weight, so if you drew a flyer you were laughing. No prizes for guessing which lake I drew, the new one! I finished the morning match top on my lake with 6.11.0 with the next weight only 2lb, however, the top weight on the other lake was 12lb so I knew I was up against it. I again won the lake in the afternoon with 9.12.0 but the same lad had 16lb on the other lake to win it. I did however finish 2nd overall and had a really enjoyable day.
Sunday was my first match for my new team Milton Keynes Sensas in the opening round of the Northampton Summer League. How many boats??!! There must have been 100. I fished very patiently at 13m all day waiting for bites on a very hard day with maggot or worm baits to catch 7 Skimmers and a big Perch for a weight of 7.15.7 and finish second in the section just missing out on the frame. I did win the section by default, which was won by the match winner who drew opposite the Marina mouth and caught Skimmers on the feeder.
Most importantly the team won, beating our main rivals Shakespeare who tied with our other Milton Keynes side but who unfortunately were beaten into third place on weight. We were really pleased with our performance on a hard day as some of the lads had put together weights of squatt fish, others Skimmers whist some caught on hemp.
I hope you've enjoyed my first diary and I look forward to telling you all about my forthcoming matches next month.
Good luck and tight lines,
Lee
Many thanks Lee. If you would like to contribute then let us know by clicking this link and we will get back to you. We would love more articles so dont be shy!
Simon |
